Ameren CEO made $5 million last year
Ameren Chief Executive Gary Rainwater received $5.0 million in total compensation last year, according to a proxy statement filed today with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
His pay package included a salary of $935,000, up 3.9 percent from 2007, and an annual cash incentive of $771,656, up 11 percent from 2007. Rainwater also was credited with stock awards of $2.8 million and a pension and deferred compensation value of $456,616. The stock-award value is an accounting figure for shares that he received in 2008 and previous years; his 2008 equity incentive award had a grant-date fair value of $2.15 million.
Ameren’s earnings per share fell 10.6 percent last year, and its shares are down more than 50 percent in the past 12 months. In February it slashed its dividend to conserve cash.
Rainwater is handing the CEO title to Thomas Voss on May 1. Voss made $1.8 million last year, including a salary of $475,000, as executive vice president and chief operating officer.
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David Nicklaus has covered St. Louis business for more than 25 years. His column appears three days a week on the Post-Dispatch business page. 
Companys can lose money and CEO’s can continue to make big bucks, especialy if raise heights in the price of the product is approved by some govt commission. that is greed my friends and we the poor will stay poor. Wake up America the system is broken.
As an Ameren shareholder, I’m really offended by the pay these clowns get. I’d be happy to lose the same amount of company money, but skip all the bonuses. By the way, how do you justify a bonus of anything above zero when the company loses money? In years like the last one, shouldn’t they pay money back to the company?
What was the average raise for employees at Ameren last year? I’m not sure why anyone at a public company deserves a raise in the face of declining performance? I guess executive salaries don’t come to mind when developing cost reduction plans.
The CEOs can make whatever the companies are willing to pay them. The CEOs are paying more in taxes than you folks are grossing. Don’t worry - as Obama spends us in to bankruptcy and you folks jealously fret over someone’s wealth - you can thank the CEOs for their tax $$$ helping you blood sucking idiots keep your homes.
Mrknowitall, your name is an oxymoron. This has nothing to do with Obama. This has to do with corporate greed. This has to do with CEOs getting double-digit percentage raises while asking the working man to go without a raise, take a pay cut, or even worse, get laid-off. How many line-men could be kept on during hard economic times for the company if the Executives would forgo their raise for that year? Reganomics and the trickle-down theory only works if the executives let it trickle down. The last 20 years has shown us that they tend to plug that hole and the trickle becomes a pool at the executive level.
During the storms of 2006, Ameren wrote down enough of the storm damage to get an Earnings-per-share of 2.98 cents. The executives bonus paid out when it reached 2.95 cents. The workers got their bonus when it reached 3.05 cents. Coincidence? When questioned on that practice, the executives made the statement (paraphrased) “The workers received their bonus. It was all the over-time work they performed during the storms”. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe a bonus is pay in addition to the pay you receive for your hourly work. Still feel like supporting these greedy members?
Final note: The share price of Ameren has continued to shrink over the last 5 years while executive pay has increased. Sound like good financial stewardship?
These SOB’s are unbelievable. Red- I agree w/you. Knowitall- you know nothing.
Let’s email the psc about this nonsense.
pscinfo@psc.mo.gov
cry baby cry.
To answer your question Red, at least in regards to Rainwater’s increase in salary and cash incentive, at the most that would pay for 1 lineman.
Everyone likes to rail on the executives for taking tis pay. None of you, if you are honest about it, would ever turn down that money if you were in his shoes. I sure as heck wouldn’t.
The whole issue of executive compensation is the fault of your Federal Government. That’s right, Uncle Sam. Over the course of the last 20 years, in an effort by the Dems to make CEO pay more “transparent”, they have enacted rules that have had the exact affect of accelerating executive pay. They wanted executive pay to be public information, so they made it so…only now everyone could see what eveyryone else was making, and all of a sudden pay went up to align with the highest salaries. Then the Dems pushed a cap on executive pay…boom, the birth of the stock option arrives. Of course, since pay is transparent, the amount of the options is known to all, so again it gets aligned with the highest totals. Other things have been done too.
This is what happens, more often than not, when the Government decides to regulate a market, in this case the market being executive compensation.
I’m not saying that paying this guy 5 million when the stock has decreased and profits have fallen makes sense. All I am saying is that this whole executive pay free-for-all is courtesy of the Congress of the United States. Write them instead of the PSC…
In his defense, for what it is worth, he did spend a lot of money on tree removal, burying lines, and other long term benefits that do not show in this year’s bottom line. And stock prices for most utilities that use coal-fired plants have decreased the last year…indicating a possible market affect as opposed to specific leadership at his particular company.
Tim is a smart guy and makes good points. Way to go!
Why don’t you babbies quit picking on the CEO’s! They work hard for their money and you’re just jealous! They’re the kind of true patriots that this country needs more of. You want the terrorists to win and picking on the CEO’s is helping them.